The NCAA is appealing a Mississippi judge’s ruling that allows Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss to compete in the upcoming football season.
On Thursday, attorneys representing college athletics’ governing body filed a petition to the Mississippi Supreme Court aiming to challenge Judge Robert Whitwell’s Feb. 12 ruling. After a six-hour hearing in the Calhoun County Chancery Court, Whitwell laid out a 90-minute verdict that he believed the NCAA had wrongly denied Chambliss a sixth season of eligibility, granting the 23-year-old an injunction in the process.
The NCAA is asking Mississippi’s high court to review Whitwell’s ruling and make a decision on the merits of his verdict, so that the case can be closed ahead of Ole Miss’ 2026-27 opener versus Louisville on Sept. 6.
NCAA officials denied a request by Ole Miss to grant Chambliss an extra year of eligibility not once, but twice, arguing that he had exhausted the association’s rule granting student-athletes five years to complete four seasons. Chambliss’ camp, however, argued that a battle with chronic tonsillitis, among other ailments, rendered the quarterback incapable of competing at Division II Ferris State in 2022. The NCAA argued that Ole Miss provided inadequate medical records to support that assertion.
Chambliss, represented by trial lawyers Tom Mars and William Liston, effectively made his case in court, given Whitwell’s ruling. The reigning SEC Newcomer of the Year had the backing of Ferris State head football coach Tony Annese and a licensed doctor who treated him in 2022, via written testimony of his illnesses, while the NCAA did not provide a witness during the February hearing to refute the medical claims.
Still, the NCAA believes it did not receive a fair hearing. Beyond that, league officials are concerned that this case, among others, has set a dangerous precedent in which the NCAA virtually lacks eligibility enforcement authority, with respect to the fact that state courts can supersede the association’s decisions.
“If courts can intervene in NCAA eligibility decisions to provide special treatment to favored athletes, then the NCAA’s ability to ensure fair athletic competition in which all participants play by the same rules will depend upon the whims of trial courts throughout the country,” the NCAA wrote to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
In its most recent request, the NCAA cited a 2015 ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court that overruled a lower court’s verdict in a high school sports eligibility case. The state’s high court vacated a Forrest County Chancery Court ruling that allowed an ineligible Hattiesburg High School basketball player to compete during the 2011-12 season.
The case surrounded Lawrence County transfer Tiara Griffin, who transferred to Hattiesburg High at the beginning of her senior year. The MHSAA argued that Griffin’s family moved her to Hattiesburg to become athletically eligible, and cited her involvement with an Amateur Athletics Union summer basketball team coached by Burnell Wesco, who then coached the Tigers’ ninth-grade team, as evidence of malfeasance.
Griffin’s mother contended that she had taken a new job within the Hattiesburg Public School District, prompting the move. The Mississippi Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the MHSAA because Hattiesburg High had “failed to state a legally cognizable claim or cause of action.” But it is worth noting that now-Chief Justice Michael Randolph sided with the dissenting justices in calling the MHSAA’s decision to rule Griffin ineligible “arbitrary and capricious.”
It is also worth noting that six of Mississippi’s seven supreme court justices went to Ole Miss in some academic capacity.